---

EU: Codecision (EUC Report)

My Lords, I welcome this interesting and significant report, which seems to me to mark a further stage in the evolution of the Lords committee structure, which is welcome, while recognising how the gradual expansion of our committees has contributed over the past 30 years or so to transforming the role of this House. I feel some of the history of the EU Committee, because when I first came to the House, the Clerk of Parliaments, Michael Wheeler-Booth, would like to remind people that he had been the first Clerk to the European Communities Committee, and one of his first witnesses had been a rather nervous young woman whose nerves he had strengthened before she gave evidence by giving her a double gin and tonic. That was my wife. I have seen the evolution of that committee, which was rather small to start with and dealt with a limited amount of legislation. With the Lisbon treaty, a not insignificant treaty in terms of a number of changes, we see the competences of the European Parliament extended and widened over a number of areas from which it was previously excluded, and this House has to adjust again. I simply mark something that many Conservatives are reluctant to accept, which is that as the United Kingdom has more and more to negotiate the basis of national policy in collaboration with others through various international forums, Ministers and officials are necessarily making compromises and necessary trade offs and offering concessions, and that potentially makes it harder for the usual forms of domestic accountability to be maintained. When it comes to climate change negotiations and to a range of international organisations—even to NATO—it is very difficult for us to find out what is going on and to keep abreast of it. In the European Union, we have more chance of keeping abreast of what is happening than most and, in this respect, the European Parliament is an ally rather than a competitor. I spent much of yesterday in the rather overgrand and unnecessarily fancy buildings of the European Parliament, and I had my usual mixed feelings about them but, in some ways, the European Parliament is a real parliament that conducts real negotiations of the sort that our Executive-dominated political system does not allow the British Parliament to do very often. There is detailed discussion and negotiation. I sat in briefly on a discussion between a number of MEPs and one of the nominees for the Commission, who was a replacement for a nominee who had already withdrawn. Unfortunately, I missed Madeleine Albright giving evidence to a European Parliament committee. The European Parliament is a serious institution with which we should be co-operating as far as possible. The report recognises that there are formal processes, but also informal processes that we have to try to grapple with. That is true of all politics, including what happens in this House. What happens in the Chamber is concerted very effectively by what we all do in our offices and in corridors between times. We need to work more closely with other national parliaments and with the European Parliament formally and informally. That means that the British Parliament’s liaison office in Brussels will become increasingly important to us, and many of us would like to know a little more about how it operates and how it feeds into the committee structure. It means that we should be better informed about exchanges with other parliaments, not only through COSAC but through the meetings that now take place between committee chairs of various sectoral committees in different national parliaments and in both Chambers here, so that we are aware of what is happening. I am always pleased to discover how high the reputation of our committees is elsewhere in the European Union. I spoke at a small dinner last night and was introduced to the Secretary-General of the European Parliament, who immediately began to cite several useful committee reports from this House, which he had found valuable in feeding back into reports. I have had the same experience when visiting other national parliaments. We now face the delicate task of maintaining the broader, wider and necessarily selective role that characterises the Lords committee and, at the same time, monitoring shifts in proposals as they work through this rather complex process. That carries implications for staffing and for the workload of committee and sub-committee chairs which I hope will be borne in mind by the usual channels or the House authorities, whether they are the same thing or different; we heard about this in the previous debate. The implications need to be taken into account as we carry on through. There are also implications for our links with other parliaments, with the European Parliament, and in particular with the British members of the European Parliament. Paragraphs 103 and 104 of the report are particularly useful in that regard. I was not aware of how formal the links now are. There is a trialogue between the Commons scrutiny committee, our committee and our MEPs, which is excellent. I was engaged in a number of informal conversations with British MEPs from my own party group in Brussels yesterday which I find extremely helpful, just as I do when I talk to Liberal members of other national parliaments; I find out what is going on and exchange ideas. I regret that the Conservatives have become a more marginal force in the European Parliament, which makes it much more difficult for them to benefit from the same sort of exchanges. This is a very valuable and significant report, and I hope that the House authorities will think through what the long-term implications for the operations of the Lords committee will be.